Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Poem Research

Taha Muhammad Ali was born and raised in a village in Galilee. Then at seventeen he and his family fled their village because of the Arab-Israeli War. They fled to Lebanon but a year later he returned with his family and settled in Nazareth. In Nazareth he ran a souvenir shop during the day and study poetry at night. He wrote about his childhood and the conflicts he had survived. He was self-taught and published poems in English and Arabic. His first collection of poetry in English was published in 2000. Taha Muhammad Ali died in 2011at age 80.

My poem "Meeting at the Airport" by Taha Muhammad Ali is about his past fiancee, Amira. When he escaped to Lebanon Amira came with him but when he went back to settle in Nazareth, Amira stayed in the refugee camps in Lebanon. The poem is about when years later Ali manages to find Amira again with help of a friend. He meet her in the airport but she doesn't believe that it really is Taha. So she remembers a question that she asked him in their youth and asks it to him then. He answers correctly and she is overcome with emotion because at this point both of them are married with children and they can never be together. Though it actually happened Amira represents Taha Muhammad Ali's homeland and how it is now lost and how the past is in the past.